Any Given Saturday
by onepiecefreec
Summary: one-shot, team-fic. Sophie's crazy, Nate's worried, Hardison is confused, Parker's Parker, and Eliot is not the Joker.


Set in season 2, no spoilers.

Disclaimer: I don't own Leverage. I also don't own a turtle, but that's a whole other story.

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"What_ is_that?!" Sophie suddenly exclaimed in the middle of perusing a fashion catalog Nate had in his condo. (Everyone knew that the only reason he had it was for her.)

At Sophie's outburst Nate immediately came in to the dinning/kitchen area from his bedroom up above. "Are you okay?" he asked in concern.

"No, that infernal noise is driving me crazy!"

"What noise? I didn't hear anything."

"I didn't hear anything either." Hardison said from his position on the couch where he was showing Parker something on his laptop.

"How could you not hear that?"

"But what is it?" Nate inquired.

"I'm not sure. It's some sort of beep, like from an alarm maybe, but it only sounds once then stops." She stood up to pace in front of the kitchen. "I've heard it a few times today already and I heard it several times when we were all here yesterday."

Nate hesitated before speaking, "Are you sure you're not just imagining it?" He tried not to put the wrong tone into his voice when he said it; he didn't want her angry. Unfortunately Parker chose that moment to twist around on the couch and add her two cents to the debate.

"Maybe you're having auditory hallucinations!" There was something akin to glee in her voice when she told them her theory. Though they weren't sure if it was because she was just in a happy mood or that she wanted Sophie to be losing it.

"I am not crazy!" Her voice came out angry and indignant.

"Whoa, cool down, we know that." Hardison spoke in what he perceived to be a calming voice. "There's no need to get hostile, just take some deep breathes," he breathed in and out to demonstrate to her how it was done. Sophie sent a glare in his direction at his efforts to calm her.

Ever playing the peacemaker between them all, Nate attempted to direct them all to a new conversation. "Where's Eliot?"

Hardison snorted, "Guy's probably off beatin' someone up just for the fun of it."

"Eliot's not evil!" Parker turned to shout at him.

"I never said he was evil."

"But I was watching TV earlier and it was talking about how the man was a bad person because he liked to hurt people and everyone in the show is always calling him evil, even Batman. Eliot's not evil!"

"What?" Nate asked in utter confusion.

"The Joker…he's evil," she said it as though it was the most obvious explanation. "And Eliot doesn't have green hair or a purple suit and he doesn't laugh while he disappears into the shadows. I mean, I've seen him smirk while he does it, but it's not the same!" she insisted fervently.

"You were watching Batman cartoons yesterday?" Hardison asked in that quiet, curious voice he often used. There was a gleam in his eyes at the prospect of someone else on the team being into comics.

"Yes."

"I didn't know you liked Batman."

"I like The Munsters better."

Sophie cut in with a question, "What are the Munsters?" At that inquiry they both turned to look at her like she was insane. It was odd to see that particular look turned on someone other than Parker.

"The Munsters was a 1960s sitcom that aired for two years depicting the home life of a family of monsters." (Eliot walked through the door in the middle of Hardison's rant.) "The show was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era, it also-."

"See, I told you Eliot doesn't have green hair." Parker pointed towards him as she said it.

"Excuse me?" he asked rather gruffly. He didn't really like being the object of attention, especially when he wasn't around.

"Parker was telling us why you aren't evil." Nate helpfully told him as he was sure Eliot would never be able to get an answer from Parker that made sense.

"And if I had green hair I'd be evil." It was spoken more as a statement rather than a question, but Nate replied anyway.

"Apparently, it had something to do with Batman, I think."

Eliot turned to Parker and spoke what he had come to say to her quite often, "There's somethin' wrong with you."

Nate jumped in to try to get things on track for the day. "Now that everyone's here, why don't we start the meeting?" he waited for everyone to take a seat somewhere before continuing. "Hardison, run it."

~*~

~*~

"So as you can see, our client was correct in saying that it won't be easy getting into the Oswald building." Nate and Hardison had just finished filling them all in on the security of skyscraper they would have to break into to get their evidence.

"Oh please," Parker boasted, "I've done harder ones than this by myself with only a day of prep." No one really doubted her though. After all, this was Parker.

In the lull in conversation while they were all turning back to the monitors, Sophie suddenly said rather loudly, "That! Right there, that was it." When nobody reacted except for odd looks from Nate and Hardison she spoke on. "Oh come on! You can not tell me that none of you heard it that time either!" More silence from the group and more odd stares.

Eliot was thoroughly confused. "Anybody wanna explain what's goin' on?"

Parker leaned in next to his ear and whispered, "Sophie went crazy."

"Don't _do_ that," he growled back to her, pushing her away from him. "It's weird."

"I'm not crazy," Sophie repeated herself. She faced Eliot to explain to him, "I keep hearing this quite beep noise; it's really getting on my nerves. When I was hearing it yesterday it sounded like it was coming from the living room, but I looked and couldn't find it. Today I can't tell where it is, but it definitely sounds quieter."

"Yeah, it got on my nerves too after a while," Eliot said.

"You heard it?!" Sophie was happy that finally someone else understood her.

"So Sophie's not crazy?" Parker asked Hardison.

"At first it didn't bother me; just went off every hour, exactly 38 minutes into the hour. But it got really annoying when I was tryin' to watch hockey last night, so I moved it to where it would be quieter."

"Why didn't you just get rid of it?" Sophie inquired.

"It was only annoying when it was right next to me." At Nate's raised eyebrows he explained, "It was between the seat cushions."

"Where'd you put it?"

"In the fridge."

Sophie was immediately up from her seat and heading into the kitchen.

"Seriously man, you put it in the _fridge_?" Hardison asked incredulously.

"Shut up."

They could hear Sophie open the fridge and begin to shove thing around. "Aha! This _has_ to be it," she said victoriously. She walked back to stand in front of them all and show what she had found.

"A stopwatch?" Hardison asked again with the skeptical tone.

"Hey, that's mine!" Parker yelled. "I've been looking for that for forever!" She jumped up and snatched it from her hands.

"Why was it in the couch?" Nate queried.

"For safekeeping."

"Why do you have it if you were just going to stick it in my couch?"

"It's important . . . for stuff," she said it as though that explained everything.

"Wait a minute," Hardison brought the conversation back on topic, "_that's_ what's been drivin' you crazy all this time, beepin' and what not?" At Sophie's nod, Hardison asked. "How's the thing even on!? It's still in the package!"

THE END

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Author's note/s: This whole stopwatch thing totally happened to my family (it drove my dad crazy lol) and it also happened to really close friends of ours too. Apparently there was an entire line of defective stopwatches.

Please, please, please **REVIEW**, somebody, anybody! This was my first time writing for Leverage and I would really like to know what people think about it! I know it probably edged toward crack a bit, but I wanted to put it up anyway.

(P.S. Please tell me if you thought the characters were OOC, I tried to keep them correct, but my muse insisted I write it this way.)


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